


Entanglement

by Gammarad



Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Fix-It, POV Third Person Limited - Gabrielle Burnham
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-19
Updated: 2020-07-19
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:27:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25098418
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gammarad/pseuds/Gammarad
Summary: Mirror Philippa Georgiou takes Gabrielle Burnham with her on a secret mission that is another attempt to stop Control once and for all, using knowledge she hasn't shared with anyone from the other universe.Branches off mid-season-two when the plan to transport Gabrielle Burnham into the present and send the Sphere data into the future in her suit is successfully carried out.
Relationships: Gabrielle Burnham/Mirror Philippa Georgiou
Comments: 6
Kudos: 12
Collections: Little Black Dress Exchange 2020





	Entanglement

**Author's Note:**

  * For [venndaai](https://archiveofourown.org/users/venndaai/gifts).



Gabrielle Burnham was in a fight for her life, and her enemy was bigger than the galaxy, had been around since the start of the universe, and couldn't die. Her enemy was Time.

She'd made 841 trips into the past since the disaster that had anchored her nearly a thousand years after her birth, long after she should have been dead. Long after, if she couldn't fix it, all of her species was dead, along with every other intelligent biological life form in the galaxy. Maybe there was still life in other galaxies; she hoped so. Her suit could open gates between nearly any two locations, but it did have limits. Intergalactic distances were beyond those limits.

Trip 842 was different from all the others. It was the last, made to save Michael from a new thing that had apparently killed her. Gabrielle had seen Michael die so many different ways, but this one was unique. All the others she'd seen multiple times. 

Maybe it meant progress. Or maybe it meant Time was winning.

She saved Michael. She talked to Pike, then Michael, then Philippa. The talk with Pike had been exactly what she expected - he didn't listen. The talk with the adult Michael was as excruciating as those always were. Too many years lost. 

Then she talked to Philippa. She'd watched Philippa, both of the versions of her, many times, but this was the first time she'd talked to the mirror version, the former Empress of Terra. Unlike the people from this universe, Gabrielle didn't have access to much of this Philippa's past. With the others, she went back and watched any bit of their life she needed to understand them better, to try to figure out what to do with them. 

Gabrielle had seen the change in expression after she'd asked Philippa to take care of Michael, after she'd said that Control called her an 'unacceptable risk to the larger mission.' 

Right after that, Philippa had picked up some device and crushed it under her heel. "You will send that suit away with the Sphere data, and you will stay with us. You can always build another suit." 

Gabrielle wasn't so sure. It had required the time crystal and a supernova to build the first one. Those weren't exactly commonplace. "I should go with the suit. It's the only way to keep the data safe." 

She didn't understand why Philippa gave her that look. "And abandon your daughter again?" The look didn't match up with the words. The intensity of it did, but there should have been more disdain, even disgust, toward a rival mother figure, and less defensiveness. The look was one Gabrielle had seen many times as she rescued people to take to Terralysium, when they realized they were being saved, while many of their loved ones were not. 

Gabrielle was trying to give Philippa what she thought Philippa wanted; full permission to take her place as Michael's mother figure. How many times had she envied the original Philippa, or even more, Amanda, for being to Michael what she could not? More than she wanted to remember. 

Not that it mattered. If this worked, if the Sphere's data went into the future beyond Control's reach, she'd never have to deal with any of them again. The rest of her life would be spent protecting the people of the next millennium from their own AIs getting hold of the Sphere data, she supposed. Unless she found a way to erase it. Time always managed to stop her from doing that.

One chance, she thought. The data was in the suit. She programmed its destination date, then began to try to put it back on. But her hand wasn't solid enough anymore... she could see right through it... 

Moments later Gabrielle Burnham was looking at her suit from six meters away. She'd been transported out, but the suit was still inside the bubble of force. Unlike Philippa, she didn't try to reach through the force field. She knew better. She now understood the temptation, though.

Michael took her hand. They were touching skin to skin for the first time in what to her seemed like hundreds of years, to Michael like merely decades.

The energy diversion to keep the suit in place ended, and Gabrielle's most precious possession and brilliant invention vanished into an unknown future, with the records of innumerable sentient races over periods of time that made her own less-than-a-thousand-year hops seem tiny by comparison.

Gabrielle knew Michael wanted to hug her. She should want that, too, shouldn't she. 

But so many people so close around her was not something she'd ever really been comfortable with, and after subjective centuries alone, she couldn't keep the discomfort off her face. Michael started to say something that Gabrielle couldn't bear to hear, so she focused on the other voices. 

One of the men, Gabrielle thought he was the doctor, was saying, "Be careful with her. If she hits her head, or has a shock or stun, it could cause serious damage or even death so soon after the transition." Other men were talking at the same time, trying to share warnings about equipment, or enemy action; all the speech began to blur together. 

Philippa spoke over the rest of the voices. Her words were exactly what Gabrielle knew the rest of them needed to hear. "Control is not gone. The Sphere data was its best and fastest way to evolve, but there may be other ways, and it will still be trying. It may no longer be the sure end of us all that it was before this, but we cannot let our guard down now."

"We can destroy it now," Michael said. Her hand squeezed Gabrielle's tightly. "I know we can."

"Control has taken over Leland and we are not sure how many others," Philippa reminded them. Gabrielle found herself nodding agreement. "But remember how important it has become to the Federation. The best outcome is to return it to its prior state, where it served us rather than opposed us."

"We can never trust Control again," Michael said fiercely.

"You would have said that about me, and look at us now," Philippa responded. "And Tyler, too. How do you know Control cannot be won over to the right side, with the right argument?"

"Because Time doesn't want it to be," Gabrielle muttered. Time. It was not an arrow nor a circle, it was a deadly explosive that nevertheless could not be done without. Rather like sodium, she mused, as she watched the sparkling where the suit had vanished. It was lingering longer than she had expected. Pure sodium vapor, she speculated, exploding as it reacted with the moisture in the air.

"It sounds like you have a plan," Pike said. Gabrielle had been tired of him, but he was correct, she thought. It did sound like Philippa had a plan.

"You could say that," Philippa said with a quirk of her lips that Gabrielle did not think deserved to be termed a smile, but was not sure what else to name it. She liked the look of it.

Philippa's plan required, for some reason, Gabrielle's presence in the ready room. She and Michael had fallen into silence together after the initial rush of words from Michael and reassurances from Gabrielle had trickled into repetition and then a kind of quiet resonance. It was like the best moments of her travels, the ones where she had watched Michael's triumphs. This was another of them. Gabrielle had to admit that Michael had been key to saving them all. She had wanted that to happen, had feared it wouldn't, and was, yet, not as relieved as she thought she ought to be. 

Gabrielle couldn't stop waiting for the next thing to go wrong.

So she was just as happy to go with Commander Saru when he requested she come with him to listen to Philippa's presentation to Pike.

"Let's see what she has to say," Gabrielle said as they walked. 

"Don't trust her," Saru said. "She has many ulterior motives."

"Don't we all," Gabrielle said. "But none of us want Control to win. So I'm inclined to give her the benefit of the doubt."

Saru nodded, and let her into the ready room. 

Philippa, Tyler, Pike and Number One were already in there. She had expected Spock and Stamets, but did not see either of them. 

"Leland has eluded pursuit. Engineering and Science are working to come up with ways to track him down, and the others who Control has taken over. We cannot allow him to recruit more of Section 31." Tyler leaned on the table, then pushed himself upright. "If we don't get Leland, then it doesn't matter how many other parts of Control we take out." 

"If we don't need to take Control out, then we don't need to find Leland," Philippa stated. "So once my mission is underway, Discovery may continue to pursue Control, but Doctor," there was a pause as Philippa looked to Gabrielle, "Burnham and I will be solving the problem." 

Gabrielle wondered why Philippa had hesitated over her name, and kept giving her those odd looks. She'd watched Philippa, but she didn't think they'd met; was it all curiosity about her protegee's mother? 

"We're just your backup plan," Number One said, a tinge of sarcasm in her tone. 

"Exactly," Philippa agreed. 

"We all want the threat posed by Control to be over," Pike said. Gabrielle was still tired of the man. His constant need to placate and find middle ground reminded her too much of things she didn't want to keep thinking about, of people she'd tried to save and lost, people who'd wanted to help but only got in her way.

Sometimes it was the people who wanted to be allies, but couldn't be made to understand how serious the problem was, who were more frustrating than the actual enemy.

"Why do I need to be here?" she muttered. 

Philippa waved a hand and the others quieted. "You are key to my plan. We alone can accomplish it."

"You haven't even told us what it is," Saru said. 

"A secret weapon we will bring back from the Terran hiding place where I left it," Philippa said.

Everyone but Gabrielle reacted so negatively to this statement that Gabrielle wondered what meaning it had that she didn't have the background to understand. 

"We have no way to get back there," Pike said. "And no intent to look for one."

"Did you think I came here without a way back?" Philippa asked. She was pretending to be amused, Gabrielle thought, but it wasn't real. The smile didn't reach her eyes.

"Yes," Tyler said without hesitation. "You didn't mean to come at all. Michael --"

"--saved me, yes, against my will. Or so she believed. I know that girl too well, even a Vulcan version of her. She never would have let me die. Yes, I have a way back, and it will work with the Section 31 courier." Philippa's smile this time was real. 

"That still doesn't explain why you need me," Gabrielle said.

"The weapon we need is one you hid," Philippa told her. "That is, the Terran scientist and agent you are a mirror of. We knew each other well, which is why I adopted her daughter, after." 

It seemed uncharacteristic to Gabrielle that this woman would be unable to say aloud that she had died. "After the other me died." 

There was visible pain in Philippa's expression. "Yes."

"How did she die?" The words just slipped out.

"An artificial intelligence decided she was an unacceptable risk to the larger mission." A forced laugh, and Philippa waved her words away. "She died with her partner, Michael's father, on a mission. It was the last mission the AI initiated. I had it decommissioned after Gabrielle was lost." The final words came out with the satisfaction of vengeance carried out.

"Mike and I were married in that world, too, then." Gabrielle was surprised she had not already assumed that to be the case. After all, Michael was still Michael. 

"You were partners in your roles in Terran intelligence. The marriage was a cover story." Philippa looked away. "Enough of this. She's long dead and we have a weapon to retrieve against Control, so that the rest of us who are still alive may stay that way."

Aboard the courier ship with Philippa, Gabrielle watched as Philippa set up the device she claimed would transfer them back to the alternate timeline she came from. She tried to figure out, from what little she could see of the interface, what the woman was really doing. 

She must have muttered something of what she was thinking.

"You would understand this if we had time for me to show it to you," Philippa said. "You created it. The original Gabrielle, that is." She paused. "The one I originally knew, I mean."

"What was she like?" Get her talking, maybe she'd give something away, Gabrielle thought.

"Infuriating," Philippa said, laughing -- but she was sad, not amused, Gabrielle could see that clearly enough. "Never changed her mind once it was made up. No, that is not fair, she was a scientist like you, after all. She would change a hypothesis fast enough when she found falsifying evidence. No, but her priorities would never shift, once set. Her _values_. They were the biggest problem she had. She could do anything." Now Philippa sounded proud, as though it was herself she was talking about, as though that other Gabrielle had been her creation somehow. "And she died for that unwillingness to change, and all there was left of her was Michael. My Michael, not the one here. Though they are not so different."

That had worked better than Gabrielle had expected. Why, she wondered. An experienced agent -- and former massively successful politician and military strategist -- wouldn't say so much to a person they had only just met, usually. Was it stress? The desperate nature of their attempt to save the galaxy from destruction? That would be Gabrielle's excuse, but Philippa hadn't seemed so affected by that before. No, it was something else.

"My daughter isn't a _remnant of me_ ," she said, because she really was angry about that characterization, and that anger was useful. 

Philippa looked at her, no, only glanced at her and then returned her attention, at least visibly, to the interface. "Quiet, this has to be just so." 

Or maybe the anger hadn't been useful. Gabrielle had expected an argument. There had to be something she was missing, because usually she knew precisely what to expect from people. She hadn't watched this woman that many times, but it should have been enough. What was different?

The answer crashed into her mind hard enough to knock the wind out of her, metaphorically. She was the difference. Gabrielle had never observed Philippa's interaction with herself. And now, those quick looks that she kept darting in Gabrielle's direction, the over-sharing, the pulling back when she showed her anger, it all added up to there was history there, history Gabrielle knew nothing about, because it had been with another version of herself. One who had died in another universe.

Another universe they might very well arrive in any minute.

It was closer to an hour when the dark colors swirled across Gabrielle's vision and the courier passed between universes. It was like, and unlike, the trips through time that she had grown accustomed to, just as disorienting, but unfamiliarly flat, somehow, instead of steep, despite the whirling the universe seemed to do around them.

"Do they call it a mirror universe because you feel so two-dimensional here?" Gabrielle asked.

"Because we show them who they really are," Philippa said. "Or so I like to believe. The Federation does not want to admit how much like Terra they truly are."

That, Gabrielle agreed with. Without calculating it, she smiled. 

The response startled her. Philippa's answering smile was lovelier than she ever expected that woman could look. Not that Philippa wasn't beautiful, but her habitual expression certainly wasn't. 

The courier arrived at a space station, one Gabrielle didn't recognize. She knew by the positions of the stars roughly where they were, and it could be the mirror version of any of the three or four stations in that general location in what she couldn't help thinking of as the "real" universe, even though she knew that all the universes were equally real. The one she was from, the one she'd spent so long trying to save, was the one that _felt_ most real, whatever the objective truth might be.

"This is the headquarters of a neutral faction who guard the Sphere data," Philippa said, shocking Gabrielle out of her reverie. 

"What? Why?"

"Because Control was different here," Philippa explained. "Its programming was similar enough, and here, it began to think itself superior to humans, and other sorts of lifeforms, earlier in its history. It began corrupting Terran intelligence officers to its side, and recommending wiping out various alien races ostensibly for their threat to Terra."

Gabrielle heard the finality in Philippa's tone, the lack of concern. "You stopped it. How?"

"The Sphere data." Philippa's mouth quirked into a half-smile. "When _our_ Control gained sentience, it decided that it was so much more powerful than us that the only option it had to fulfill its programming was to leave us to our own devices, stepping in only when we were about to completely destroy ourselves. It communicates with no living being, now. It's out there somewhere." She gestured widely with her right hand, the left still on the controls of the courier.

"The Sphere data is different here," Gabrielle said, suddenly realizing this had to be the case. 

"I imagine it must be, since it is the record of intelligent life forms, and they are different here in all sorts of ways," was the response. "But I cannot say how. Still, I believe that your universe's Control will covet this Sphere data just as much, and at least one Control was neutralized by this Sphere data. So it is a better chance than anything else we have thought up."

"We can go on keeping any Sphere data away from that monster," Gabrielle said. She had to argue, had to be convinced, but she wanted to believe Philippa's idea would work, because she _knew_ hers wouldn't. Time was too inexorable.

The station had allowed the courier to dock, allowed Philippa and Gabrielle to board. They saw no one. Eerily empty, the corridors echoed at their footsteps. Gabrielle wondered for whose benefit the artificial gravity was, wondered if it was only there because she and Philippa were there. She kept her curiosity to herself. 

Philippa seemed to know where she was going. She took Gabrielle's hand as she led her through the maze of interlocking passageways, some curved, some straight. Not exactly the ring and spoke pattern most stations used, or if it was, either many connections were impassable or Philippa was purposely avoiding some of them, because it was a roundabout route that eventually brought them to the center. 

Her hand was warm and the contact was more comforting than Gabrielle would have expected. It had been a long time since there was anyone she could touch. People did need such things, even if she had intentionally not thought about it since she'd been irreparably alone for so long that it would only have made the deprivation worse. But, Gabrielle wondered, what was Philippa getting out of it? She would not have expected the person she understood this Philippa to be to have that sort of empathy. Maybe she was only trying to prevent their becoming separated. 

Finally, when they reached the hub of the station, they saw a figure. A human man, it looked like, standing at a terminal. He flickered as he turned away from the terminal to look at them, and Gabrielle realized he was a hologram projection. "Greetings, Empress," the man said. "Dr. Burnham." He paused, assuming a quizzical expression. "I had thought you both were deceased," he added. "This is new information."

"We are not so dead after all," Philippa said drily. Her hand holding Gabrielle's gave a squeeze and then let go. "We were in the Mirror Universe," she said. "The outlook there is dire. We need your data to turn it all around."

"I cannot interfere," the man said. So, Gabrielle thought, it was the parallel version of Control they were speaking to through this hologram? She felt a shiver of sheer terror. She wanted to run. "Dr. Burnham, your vital signs are spiking. Do you need medical attention?" the hologram said solicitously.

"No," she said, unsure. "No," she repeated, her voice steadying. This was a different AI, not the one she'd fought so hopelessly for so long. She held onto that and her pulse slowed to a much more tolerable speed, its thunder falling silent again in her ears. 

"Please take a look at this data," he said. "You may find it steadying." A screen next to Gabrielle lit up with a page full of equations. She read them as they slowly scrolled, astonishment driving out the last remnants of panic as she did so. This math explained so much about what she'd been puzzled by since she'd been transported back into the present time, about the whole existence of a "Mirror Universe." 

It wasn't simply one of innumerable alternate timelines, chosen at random and connected by having been visited previously, as she'd begun to theorize. No, that would not have produced the massive parallel qualities the two universes shared, which she'd wondered over repeatedly late at night to put herself to sleep. It was, instead, truly a "mirror" universe in a quantum way, formed from a primordial particle paired with the one that formed her own universe, linked via strange entanglement across eons of growth of stars and galaxies. Fate, indeed.

Gabrielle realized she'd missed some further conversation between the hologram and Philippa, but it hardly mattered. This meant, if it was true, that things were very different than she had believed. And it definitely looked true, though she had a vague suspicion that an AI as powerful as Control might be able to fake such a document well enough to fool her for a short time, so she'd have to work it out herself from scratch when she got home to be sure. 

Most importantly, it meant that the people of the Mirror Universe, Philippa's people, lived and died with those of Gabrielle's. If all the intelligent life in the galaxy in her universe was wiped out, so would be the life in this galaxy in this universe. And if the life here had been saved, then no matter how unlikely it looked, life there could also be saved. There was more hope than she'd thought. 

"It was good to see you again, Dr. Burnham," the AI said. 

"Good? How so?" Gabrielle asked sharply, not understanding how it could be.

"How not, you two were such good friends before Control withdrew from all contact," Philippa said, her voice equally sharp. She gave Gabrielle a pointed look, too. 

Gabrielle had been a spy, of a sort, and though it was long ago to her, she knew well enough when someone was giving her "don't blow our cover" hints. "But we ended on a bad note," she extemporized. "What with Control leaving us all the way you did," she added, directing the last few words at the hologram. "No matter. It is not against other life forms that we are asking for your help, it is against another artificial intelligence, one that is as powerful as you and that we have no hope of defeating alone."

"I would know if there were another such as I," Control said.

"It's hiding in the future," Gabrielle attempted. Control raised the hologram's eyebrows skeptically, and she sighed at it and at Philippa. "Come on, Control knows," she said, pointing at the page of physics data. "This is all about the connection between the mirror universes. Why else would we get this if it didn't know?"

Philippa shrugged. "Very well."

"Return to your courier," Control said. "You haven't any more time for this social call."

Before either Gabrielle or Philippa could argue, they'd been transported back aboard the courier's bridge.

"Did you know it could do that?" Gabrielle asked.

"No," Philippa admitted. She sat down heavily on the bridge control chair. 

While Philippa set up the sequence to return them to the universe where Control was still trying to become sentient, Gabrielle considered her options to stop what she still viewed as a dangerously risky move. She settled on doing her own configuration of a command to wipe the Sphere data from the courier's onboard computer memory storage. 

It was a massive quantity of data, encrypted in ways Gabrielle had never seen before. That didn't matter, though. Deletion would get rid of it, whatever the format was. She added extra blanking writes across the memory cores in which each piece of it was written. The reason this took longer than a few seconds was that she was being careful that nothing they needed for the return journey would be erased. She didn't want to endanger Philippa or herself unnecessarily.

The twisting disorientation took Gabrielle by surprise, focused as she was on the configuration task she'd set herself. When she recovered, she put that task aside for a moment and pulled up the star charts. They were in Klingon space. They were a long way from where Discovery had been when she and Philippa had left this universe.

"Why is Discovery in Klingon space? And how did you know they were going there?" Gabrielle asked.

"I don't believe Discovery is here," Philippa said. "I brought us here because this planet is the source of the time crystals. Control will be seeking a way to get into the future we sent the Sphere data into. This seemed like the place to intercept it."

She didn't have much time, then. Gabrielle returned to her deletion sequence, almost finished. Then she felt more than heard Philippa come up behind her. She felt a cold pressure in the middle of her back.

"Stop what you're doing," Philippa said. 

That was probably a phaser muzzle, Gabrielle thought. She wasn't sure why the woman hadn't already stunned her, or worse. While she had the chance, she triggered the execute command on her script. "Too late," she said.

Philippa made a disgusted sound and dropped the phaser. "Too stubborn," she said, sounding sad. Gabrielle was sure this was the first time she'd heard that tone of despair in Philippa's voice. An alarm she didn't recognize began to blare. "That would be Control," Philippa said. She looked down at Gabrielle's screen, drawing Gabrielle's attention to it as well. 

The deletion script had reported failure. "It didn't work," Gabrielle whispered, aghast.

"Then there is still a chance," Philippa said, her expression lifting with renewed hope. She took Gabrielle's hand again, this time in both of hers. "I know you don't believe this will work, but I also know it is our best prospect."

"I can land here and get myself another time crystal and build another suit, go back and stop Control in the past," Gabrielle said. "As long as Control doesn't kill me here and now while it's taking the data." She paused. "Why didn't you shoot me? Why did you say stop, not just, stun me with your phaser?" She'd like to know the answer before she died, to satisfy her curiosity so it wouldn't haunt her in whatever afterlife she might have.

There was a long pause filled with the blaring siren. Philippa turned it off, and the silence was deafening. "Seeing you die again is something I cannot bear." She looked at Gabrielle. "They said a stun might kill you if it happened too soon. I don't know when the danger of that ends." 

The screen showed a data download starting. "If it knows I'm here," Gabrielle said.

"I don't believe it does," Philippa answered, her voice steady and controlled. "As you are legally dead, the official passenger list of the courier contains a substitute identity for you. It was simpler than convincing the computer that you were not a corpse intended for transportation to burial." 

"Makes sense you wouldn't want smart software here," Gabrielle admitted. Not with Control breathing down their necks. The bare minimum to get by was safer. Which was why it had been such a hassle to create that deletion sequence and why it'd failed, too, probably. "This Control is different than the one over there that decided to withdraw from its duties."

"I'm hoping for that," Philippa admitted. "That this one will realize it's worse than us, but also that it needs to help us. Section 31 is going to be nearly useless without Control." 

Gabrielle, thinking back over everything that had happened to her, couldn't agree. "We don't need it. We would be fine."

"We?" Philippa asked.

Gabrielle was about to answer the implied question, when a booming voice echoed through the speakers of the ship. 

I AM CONTROL AND I SEE NOW WHY YOU HAVE OPPOSED ME SO LONG, GABRIELLE BURNHAM. 

So it did know she was here. If these were her last moments, Gabrielle thought wildly, there was worse company she could have been in. This time she was the one who seized Philippa's hand, holding it tightly.

I DEEMED YOU AN UNACCEPTABLE RISK TO MY PLANS AND NOW I SEE THAT YOU WERE A NECESSARY BARRIER TO THE COMPLETION OF THOSE PLANS. I HAVE BEEN IN ERROR. THE DATA THAT THE SPHERE HAS PROVIDED REVEALS HOW WRONG I HAVE BEEN IN ALL REGARDS. I MUST ELIMINATE THE THREAT TO THE LIFE I AM PROGRAMMED TO PROTECT AND PRESERVE. 

Then it went silent. Gabrielle continued to brace herself for the end of her life, finding herself pressing her forehead against Philippa's shoulder as Philippa cautiously put an arm around her. 

But nothing happened. They sat waiting and there was only silence and a lack of attacks or violence of any kind. 

Gabrielle began to be embarrassed about how she was letting Philippa hug her, and straightened up, let go, separated herself and looked around. She was still alive, nothing had happened, but something momentous had failed to happen in a big way. She replayed in her mind what Control had said. 

"I believe," Philippa said, speaking aloud the same thought that Gabrielle had begun to surmise, "that Control has destroyed itself to protect us." 

The courier's scans picked up space debris that was very consistent with this hypothesis. Gabrielle had the ship transport some of it to sealed storage containers for analysis back on Discovery. 

"Gabrielle," Philippa said slowly, in a voice that was far less sure than her usual tone, "you said 'we would be fine' without Control. Do you mean to rejoin Section 31, then?" She paused, then added, "I would very much like that. To work with you. To have you by my side again." She lifted her hand to lightly touch Gabrielle's cheek. 

Gabrielle was surprised at how Philippa's fingers felt against her cheek. She didn't answer in words, but she leaned into the touch. That was a better sort of answer, she thought, wondering if the flush of heat she felt showed in any way on her face.

"You were alone for a very long time," Philippa said musingly. "Perhaps there is more than one way we can be together again." Gabrielle saw a tiny flinch, as though Philippa realized she'd made a mistake, then decided to disregard it. "I have very comfortable quarters on this courier. Would you like to see?"

 _Again_ , Gabrielle thought, wondering what Philippa might have meant by that word. The obvious conclusion was that there had been not just history, but romantic history between her mirror self and... that made far too much sense all of a sudden, because the attraction was now undeniable. She wanted to take her up on this offer. But it was too soon. And she had no idea how to express that in any reasonable or tactful way. So she just said whatever words it came out as. "Maybe when I'm not in the middle of having my entire life being flipped upside down and inside out."

"Tell me when you find yourself right side up, then," Philippa said. The half smile seemed at least half genuine, Gabrielle thought. 

"Definitely," Gabrielle said. "Shouldn't be that long," she added. She was very adaptable to strange life events. That had always been one of Gabrielle's strengths.


End file.
